


With Neither Talent nor Taste for Peace

by lonerofthepack



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: 007's survival manual: kill it seduce it or woo it with dead things until it gives in, Bond is a sad bastard in all worlds, God!Q, M/M, Pre-Arthurian!AU, Prompt Fic, Q's modus operandi: bleed on it and its yours, god!AU, knight!Bond, the author butchers poetry for spell-casting utility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 14:10:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15608001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a pagan god who disguised himself as the young quartermaster for the kingdom’s elite knights and assassins.Bond, a noble and a Knight, had fallen in love with the Quartermaster. He finds himself in a god’s shrine to ask for a fitting courting gift.





	With Neither Talent nor Taste for Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [northernMagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/northernMagic/gifts).



> I stole this prompt from voculae (northernMagic)'s tumblr:
> 
> Once upon a time there was a minor god who disguised himself as the young quartermaster for the kingdom’s elite knights and assassins. Bond, a noble and an assassin, had fallen in love with the quartermaster, not knowing he was a god, and went to the god’s shrine to ask for a fitting courting gift. 
> 
> The god, thinking that Bond had met and fallen in love with someone else, was heartbroken but determined to see his love happy. He sent Bond on a quest for materials and favors, while he himself did the same in the divine realm, sacrificing something dear and important to him to forge the gift.
> 
> He granted Bond the gift, and Bond brought this to his quartermaster, who was extremely surprised to be receiving the gift that he had sacrificed for True Love. Q revealed his identity and they lived happily ever after.
> 
>  
> 
> Hopefully, this is passes muster for the prompt; it meanders a bit.
> 
> This is set in the same sort of pseudo-England that the Arthurian myths are, complete with ubiquitous time-line and questionable Roman presence; the closest analog is the British Isles of BBC's Merlin, well-prior to Uther.
> 
> This was beta'd by the peerless tigersilver, whose advice and input really streamlined and clarified this piece.  
> There are (meandering) thoughts on the various interesting bits that cropped up in research and the magic described in the end notes.

The night was frigid and wet, a milky froth of clouds lit up with a Wolf Moon, threatening another foot of snow to blanket the last of the Midwinter cheer. The Queen had called their people inside the walls for the celebration—no-one, poor or rich, was barred from the warmth of the castle. The village, sheared in twain by the outer ward, was empty; even the dogs and cats sought shelter in the warmth. Only the temples to the gods had fires burning, and those were fires that needed little tending even in the dead of winter. Outside the walls, the wind whipped, occasionally drawing the mournful call of a wolf.

Lord Bond of Skyfall stalked the wall-walk, passing the men who volunteered for the duty with a nod and a warm word to bolster them. The shifts were short; no one had much time to grow too cold, but the men who volunteered for it often found little joy in the season—a Knight Elite taking the time to walk among them was an honor.  
Perhaps a dubious one. The Knights Elite were great warriors, but there were rumors that their honor was…perhaps suspect. Perhaps a little too dark, a little too bloody, stained by the tears of too many ladies and the ruin of too many men. Or perhaps that was necessary. Who was to say, really?

Lord Bond was said to be the best of them. He moved as easily with the men of the guard as he did with the nobles who held the lands under the Queen’s protection, and could look as plain as a farmer or as austere and regal as the long line of lords that had borne him.

Movement from below drew his attention, pausing his step on the parapet, a shadow amongst shadows on the wall between the little rings of torchlight. A single slim figure slogged through the snow on the North Road, casting a long shadow before it toward the gate, a ragged tear in the moonlight.

“My lord.” The commander of the garrison jogged up. “Do you have any orders, or shall we manage it?”

“Tanner. I’ll handle it,” Lord Bond decided. “Be sure the men on the southwest and the east walls know to be wary.” Midwinter was a foul time to mount an attack, but the Prince Silva from across the channel was as sly and bloodthirsty as a rabid fox.

“Be safe, my lord; it is the witching hour. I’ll have the archers take the wall above you, for caution.”

Lord Bond smiled grimly, cuffed his shoulder in approval, and went to meet the shadow who’d walked out of the darkness of the northern moor.

The man, as the figure coalesced into a recognizable form, was no man at all. He was a mere youth, a thin one at that, tall and gangly, and burdened with—as Bond learned—far too many books in his rucksack and not nearly enough clothes. Spectacles slid on a frost-nipped nose, a baggy cardigan belted with cold-cracked leather was all he had close by skin to repel the bone-chill of the night air. His cloak was of better quality, as were the boots, but he was soaked to the knee and shivering like one of the court ladies’ little sleeve-dogs.

“This is Vauxhall, then?” the youth questioned Lord Bond. “Only the missive said _Benhall_ , and it was nearly forty leagues before I could find anyone who knew the difference.”

“Benhall’s a hundred miles to the west, lad. What’s your business here?”

“Don’t need to tell me twice; I’ve just come from the bloody great ship of it, haven’t I? Her Majesty called for me.”

Bond raked eyes over the creature before him. If this lad was intended to be the distraction for Silva, he was a poor one, and if he was to be an assassin in his own right, he’d be a failure. He’d be cold-slow, sufficient that Bond or one of the others could have him filleted speedily or even frothing his last gasp through a mouthful of poison before his cloak had had the chance to stop dripping. Anything else, well....

Bond’s lip curved in a thin welcome. The Queen, familiarly ‘M’ to her direct underlings and the people she respected enough to call enemies, played politics like the gods played goblets—with booms of thunder, the taste of lighting, and absolute authority. It was not for mere mortal men to interfere.

Grey-blue eyes the same hue as the river that rushed nearby raked back up from soaked boot-tips. The lad was pretty enough that Trevelyan was going to be unbearable both in his ribbing and in his attempts to bed the boy, and the Lady Papava might just try to eat him.

The Queen’s right-hand woman, Eve, the Lady Moneypenny, would eventually bring them all to heel, should it come clear that their fuss riled unpeaceable feelings in his heart. Bond was well aware he’d a tendency to hunt up massive quantities of trouble when rankled, and Lady Eve’s life’s calling was to smooth M’s way through fair means or foul. So she’d eventually rein the the rabble, but only after she’d decided Bond had been punished enough. Leaving M to assume he was dead while he made his leisurely way home after the foul-up of his last mission abroad had apparently been an unpopular decision.

At that, Lord Bond thought he might keep the boy himself, if only for a little while. Taste cries of pleasure from his lips, drag some color to the surface of the alabastre skin of that long throat, hunt the shivers of ecstasy across the planes of his long body. Shred the tatty rags the youth wore and clad him instead only in the slick linen of Bond’s sheets, the heavy warmth of his bed furs. It would be no ugly way to spend a winter.

But the young man met Bond’s gaze levelly enough, even raised an eyebrow in return, though his flush was visible despite the low light, scrawling sweetly over parchment cheeks like an ink spill. Hmm, tempting indeed to try and keep him, see if he could be seduced into being kept. It would have to depend on what M wanted of the boy.

In the meanwhile, Bond eked out another grim smile and gestured at the youth to follow.

“Come on, then.”

* * *

 

“So, Bond.”

“M,” he replied on a bow, after the Queen had greeted her young guest and sent him off to settle in. Scattered through the crowd several other pairs of eyes tracked the youth as he followed a manservant into the bowels of the Royal quarters. Alec nearly succeeded in catching Bond’s eye; he disallowed it by turning politely toward their monarch.

“You’ve just now met your new Quartermaster, Bond. Tell me, how do you find him?”

The Lord Bond was not one to startle easily. By the sharp crack of her laugh, she was deeply pleased to have managed it.

“That lad’s still got spots, ma’am. You mean him to lead?” Bond grimaced. Not even Eve would be able to save the boy; the whole of the Knights would set on him like a pack of hounds upon an injured roe deer. The only one that lot all bowed to the whims of was the Queen herself, and even the great M worked assiduously hard to retain her mastery.

“No, Bond, don’t be thick. He’ll see to keeping your arms in order, ensuring you’re well prepared to do your duty.”

“I have a squire for that.”

Well, he did, if he could but remember where he’d put the man.. Mostly, Bond preferred to see to himself.

“A squire, he says,” M mocked him. “The same squire you sent off home months ago to manage his ailing father’s farm?”

“Ah.” Bod winced. So he had. Damn, the man must have taken the good whetstone with him, too.

“Indeed.”

The Queen was not a large woman but she had presence. Bond sometimes entertained himself with fancies, shuddering to think what she might have got up to, had she the reach of arm that would have made a sword deadly in her hands—she’d chosen to wield the Knights instead, and did so with a sharp tongue, a sharper wit, and a memory as fast as solid stone. She looked out over the gathering of their people; a small portion of growing empire. He moved to stand at her elbow, so as not to obstruct her gaze.

“The Lord Boothroyd has told me of his intention to retire to his lands, and train his children in their keeping. Q will be taking his place in the forge as the Master Smith. He’ll join us at the Council of War to take up his role as spymaster as well.”

“Spymaster, _and_ Master Smith? Who is this boy?”

“He’s called Q, Bond, and he’s well-qualified for all I intend of him. That’s all you need to know.”

“Ma’am.”

* * *

 

Like the wolves in the forest, Silva struck hard in the cold night of the winter months, hungry for blood and cackling like a gore crow the entire time. His men raided villages, left homes burning and children orphaned—he heckled the castles of the Queen’s nobles, circling her lands like a fox in a chicken coop, trying to drive them all to panicked madness. He came with fire and weapons not even Bond knew exactly what to make of—arrows poisoned in black ichor, blades that seemed to thirst for blood, the machines of war the likes no one had seen, flinging twisted metal and exploding rock.

The Knights who had gone afar in their duty, they returned. M's spies kept rustled about, slipping in and out of the castle like rats—Bond had dragged more than one out of a shadow with a blade to their throat only for Q to appear like magic,  tsking at him before he escorted them away for interrogation.

Bond, and every other Knight, learned to respect the feel of Q’s hand on their metaphorical leashes—it wasn’t the brute cunning and vicious strength of M, who offered tension until the exact minute release was called for, and they might rush forward like the hounds of war. It was something altogether different.

Training, and testing, and weapons provided in such an astounding variety that none of them knew exactly what they might wield in the training ring one hour to the next. They were set to training the lesser knights, and the infantry, the light cavalry men, even the youngest guardsmen—there wasn’t a person who could wield a weapon who didn’t train with a Knight; and it was Q that kept Bond and his companions from snarling too loudly, or too bloodily, a feat that even M hadn’t dared try at such a scale and for the weeks that Q had demanded.

The trick of it, Bond realized, was the dual reward of Q’s pleasure, and the punishment of his displeasure: the presence of a pleased Quartermaster made problems disappear. All manner of problems—the fit of a hilt in the hand, the readiness of a squire with a shield—the heat and quality of a meal after endless practice, the availability of a willing and enthusiastic body to lose oneself into , to sleep soundly the night through; the ability to appear with exactly the words needed to bolster a spirit and make it possible to push that half-step farther towards deadly perfection.

The absence of Q’s favor was not merely the lack of all of those things—it was the sense of failure, like a blade of burning ice through the chest. It was hours of practice never being enough; it was soldiers like fractious horses, willful in their disobedience and dangerous in their stupidity, like cold soup and notched blades and fury with no outlet. It was a thin impassive face regarding one levelly, so perfectly uninterested—not angry, not disappointed, like a craftsman whose tool is broken beyond fixing, and thus, worth only what scrap it might provide to the cause—that the knees instinctually weakened in preparation for swearing fealty.

Bond watched his companions fall, one by one, under that will. No less sharp, no less deadly or difficult, nor less effective. But no longer tied together only by the will of one small, indomitable woman—the Knights Elite were no longer just a group of deadly blades, spread thin to prevent slicing each other to ribbons--they worked now like a chainmail vest sewed together by a master, every ring riveted and polished to a mirror shine, strong enough to ward off sword or arrow or deadly war axe.

It should have made him wary, angry; the notion that a man might try to collar him to his will, force him close under yoke with his fellows. It certainly shouldn’t have made him contemplate how ivory skin might contrast with snowy bedclothes until he had forced Q’s heart to race hard enough to leave him glowing, pink and pretty and no long matching the sheets but complimenting them. Sex was power, and M’s Quartermaster crackled with it—he wanted to learn how it came to be that a man little more than a boy could be all that this man was, tasting of lightning from a spear’s length away.

And then the peace of Midwinter shattered--the Prince Silva came himself, supposedly to treat with the Queen. Actually, he came to wheedle and gloat, and to spy. He ate at M’s table, oozed smarm at Eve and threats at M’s Knights, and ran presumptuous fingers along the length of the Lord Bond’s inseam like a rat testing the seal of a grain-store’s wall. He took his leave with a credible, if failed attempt on M’s life, and sacrificed two dozen men to the Knights’ fury to escape back to his barbarian hordes.

Tossed into full war, Bond learned he didn’t care how it was that Q had come to taste at five paces of lightning; he simply wanted to learn if he tasted of salt and sweat and living man under the scent of ozone. Wanted the mad bastard trying to take from them everything down to the living rock beneath their feet to die quickly and be forgotten at once, that he could take the time to press close and see if that taste would do anything to fill the empty places in himself that the Lord Bond, of Skyfall, tried so hard to ignore.

But he was only allowed scant moments to want such things, and those moments were squeezed into the cracks of the work of war; his awareness of Q retreated to the peripheral flashes in the edges of his vision, and so it was an unknowing courtship of razor-keen knives and science-magic, blood and ice and the bone-deep knowledge that someone understood.

* * *

 

In the end of things, the Lord Bond and the Queen’s Quartermaster were together the weapon M crushed Prince Silva with—Bond ended the man with the steel Q had pressed into his hand, and M lofted his death like a flag of victory, until the declaration created the reality, pushing Silva’s ragged army to their knees.

Q, still smelling of the forge that had birthed it and the oil with which he’d softened the leather, had pressed that fate-weighed dagger into his grip only after nicking his thumb: “She’ll never sip your blood again, Bond, if you give her the taste of it now.”

Bond had wondered, at the time, if that applied to the knife’s maker as well, wondered that if because he’d bled for Q, if he was doomed to serve him chastely ever more. The Quartermaster had pressed very close, to give him the knife—turning his head and tilting it would have been enough to bruise some color into the sweet thinness of Q’s lips, to instead cut himself on the blades of them. The sweet, cold bite of his steel had nearly been the thing to bend Bond’s knees to fealty, like the sharp heady rush of a prayer answered in the dim light of a temple.

He’d smiled, instead. “I’ll have to go tonight; if he can be got to Skyfall, it’ll be the end of him. Bring him to me, Q—lay him a path that he can’t do anything but follow, but you must make him believe it was his own idea.” And Q’s eyes, a strange compelling composite of green-brown-gold, like threads in a tapestry, had gleamed with the same vicious anticipation that lit Bond’s blood afire in his veins.

A kiss between them now would taste of lightning, Bond thought; lightning and blood and forge-hot steel.

“Bond.” And there—that was the sound of the one chain he permitted to his collar slipping free, M calling her war dogs to the field. “Are you quite finished wasting time?”

* * *

 

Blood, and ice, and fire—steel flew true, and ended the danger of Silva.

The madman had broken the sanctity of a temple, and the sanctity of a War-God’s temple at that, dragging the land’s Queen into its depths, daring to tease at spilling her blood over the altar. Bond, a staggering dozen paces behind, had thrown the knife on instinct, and ripped back enough control over the situation that it saved not only his own life, but M’s.

M, the woman who had taken him when his parents had died, let him channel all the dark loneliness of his youth into a killing sharpness that she gave him purpose to use. Perhaps it was the smoke that clouded his head, or maybe the chill of the air and the familiarity of the stone, but the realization that it would have broken him, the loss of her layered over so many other losses.

A thrown knife to the meat of the shoulder had never yet killed a man quickly, and Bond moved like lightning once the advantage was in hand, bolstered anew.

And so, Silva’s men watched him die—it was with the same determined yank of a blade across a throat that might ease a lamb to its knees, or fell a lion, hot red blood soaking over Bond’s hands and spilling great pools over the massive stone slab a hundred of Bond’s fathers had knelt before in supplication.

* * *

 

He said no prayer, asked no boon, that moment—not then. Not until his Queen, his guide, M, had been helped up, ripped cloth pressed hard to a nasty gash. Not until Silva’s men fell to their knees in surrender, and could be taken prisoner by the people of Skyfall at their lord’s command. Not until after Kincaid, his father’s seneschal and his own, loyal to the last and a better man to lead Skyfall’s day to day life than Bond could ever be, had pressed a bowl of thick stew and a mug of buttered wine into his hands and demanded he sit, and eat, and then that he sleep.

It was dark when he rose—the household silent, only the men who stood guard on the high, high walls of the mountain fortress stirred. The Lord Bond took no notice of them—boots and belt and cloak had layered over the tunic and trousers he’d slept in only because they had been close at hand and the air was too sharp to be sweet with freedom and victory. The moon was full, an Egg Moon—the lambs would come soon, and the snow would melt away.

The Lord Bond was not the sort of man who walked anywhere in a daze—his steps were deliberate and measured as he made his way.

The fire still burned in the temple; Silva’s body had been taken away. His blood, though, slopped over the altar like a sacrifice of Old, when the wild kings of these mountains spilled their own blood for the coming of spring and life, when they brought the hides of their enemies and begged the listening gods for aid in keeping their lands whole and free—the blood was fresh, and wet to his fingertips.

He’d said no prayer, asked no boons, when he’d spilled the madman’s blood. He said one now, the singing words of power and magic that he remembered from childhood, remembered his mother teaching him, and his father saying in desperate tones over the evil crackle of fire and steel, tingling on his tongue.

A gift, he asked—a worthy one, for the person who pressed steel into his hands, sharpened the cutting edge of his skills to razor-point, who had saved him, his world, his purpose and sense of peace; for the one who had enabled him to save them himself. A gift that could explain, that could give him the courage that he hadn’t realized was lacking, to give these feeling words. A gift that could explain the difference between a knee bent in fealty, and the one that bent in adoration and wildling desire.

It was an enormous boon, he realized—the flash of Old Magic nearly knocked him over, spilled the temple’s flames onto the altar and filled the space with the smoky stink of blood burning. It was like catching lightning, for an instant—he roused at the careful touch of a priestess, lumbered to his feet feeling as though he’d fought a dozen battles, not merely one, thick-headed and muzzy with it.

He didn’t know how he’d come back to his bed the next morn; perhaps he never left it. He remembered the dream of it though—the press of bladed hips against his own, the groan of hard length against hard length, the whisper of blood-red lips sipping from his, the taste of lightning and iron, the scent of pine and citrus and the sea. His lover spoke in a thick, choking voice, so heavy with sorrow he tried to hush it, to kiss away tears and smear heartbreak away like seduction paints, found himself hushed and awed instead.

_"Bring me ash and birch, holly and oak. Bring me elder and heather, and good sharp steel. Throw a’light the Milk Moon fires—weep for them, and bleed; you will bring the mountains to the fen. And beside the winding river, atop ragstone strong and old, you shall find all you need."_

He woke with a hoarse shout, and blinked down at a mess more worthy of a stripling boy than a man of his years.

* * *

 

The Lord Bond escorted his Queen home; a much slower procession than their flight to Skyfall. She felt her age, at last—somehow, M had become an old woman in the space of a single battle; weathered strong, like wood that might stand a century, but aware, suddenly, that steel might bite through wood with enough time.

He didn’t mind the speed. There was a pouch at his hip, that rode just where his sword hand fell when it rested by his side. Opened, it wafted the musty-herbal scent of heather—dried flowers, since the start of summer would be long past by the time the plant bloomed fresh, and a fresh cut of the shrubby green stalks of it when Bond had ridden so close it seemed lazy not to bring it with him. It held the heavy weight of the basalt stone he had hefted—large and strong enough to be shaped. In the evenings, he worked the stone, patiently knapping the edge the way Kincaid had showed him in the long distant days of his youth, the way knives had been built before steel took the world. And a length of oak—a young sapling, struck down hard by lightning, that he could no more look away from than he could stop breathing, until he’d swung off his horse and taken one of its slim branches, the whisper of ancient words of thanks nipping at his lips.

M thought he’d run mad. He thought he might agree with her; he’d ridden past the first ash tree he’d seen, ignoring the tug, and then the second, and had nearly been dragged off his horse by the third, a thick branch at chest height that he’d somehow steered his horse straight under, that he could have sworn was an arm’s length away until he was nudging his horse more carefully around it—he earned a deep frown from the Queen, when he mounted up with a ash switch taken from the branch, lashing it beside the oaken one on his saddle.

Elder woke him in the night, a stumbling trek of a dozen yards, that had him reaching for a knife he hadn’t thought he’d grabbed. He frightened the night guard so badly that he nearly took a sword for the trouble—quick reflexes and the elder he’d fetched deflected the steel that would have left him lame for life, and it took nearly a quarter hour to calm the man enough that he could be chastised for striking so low that an enemy aiming high could have killed him before the blow landed.

“Are you a boy, Lord Bond, to take sticks off the road like you might lead imaginary men to battle with them?”

“No, ma’am. It’s—It is a gift.”

M, the old bitch, gave him that look that meant she was cackling somewhere deep inside herself, and wouldn’t hesitate to laugh at him to his face. He took care to be a bit more circumspect, gathering the birch and the holly.

Good strong steel—well, the blade Q had given him was undoubtedly the best of the steel he owned. Selfishly, he wanted to keep it—it seemed churlish, to give a man a courtship gift of his own design; and to give such a gift over in payment for a courtship gift, even to a god, felt like breaking something precious to pieces. Bond was wealthy enough to purchase equally good steel—he wasn’t wealthy enough to buy the sort of loyalty the blade had shown, tempering skill with luck and whatever forge-magic Q had beaten into it to save them all.

His best sword, on the other hand, was his to give—long superstitious tradition had asked him to give the blade its first and last hammer blows, and he had. He’d given it hours of sweat, and more than a few casual drops of blood. It had ridden to war—its edge was keen, the metal strong, and it had saved his life many a time. Whatever the god intended of all this, the sword would have to suffice.

He’d asked for a gift and the courage to give it: as they rode ever homeward, and the days slipped longer, the moon fuller, dread rose in his heart that there was nothing so good or strong about him that it should tempt Q, a gift from the gods or no. Perhaps the man would want no War-god’s gift, given from a knight rapidly growing too old to go so easily into battle, whose scars were long and ugly in firelight and made him limp in the damp when he had the luxury of indulging them. No god could promise the acceptance of such a gift—and no gift could keep a man where he did not want to stay.

It was a terrible thing to have people go away, illness and war taking them beyond mortal reach, and the Lord Bond knew that truth as well as any orphan. But it was a worse thing, to his frightened heart, to have someone beloved go for want of something unnamable that he could not even identify to give, to leave him bewildered and lost in wanting to give it, still uncertain what lack it was that prevented it. Only M knew the story of the Lady Vesper, and why he had been so delayed in returning home, colder and harder and furious at his own weakness.

The slip of his stone, the bloodied bite of stone into the meat of his hand dragged a gasp from his mouth and tears from his eyes—it had been an ugly thought, unworthy in its timing, when he had the basalt knife in hand to be shaped, and he set it down carefully before he examined the wound. Whatever happened on the night of Beltane, it had nothing to do with Vesper. Q was no temptress, urging him to treason and the betrayal of his vows, no thief to steal them when he wouldn’t, and no coward, to die instead of face his righteous fury. Whether he handed Bond back his gift unwanted or took it gladly, Q’s honor was unassailable. The gift would reflect that, or be unworthy in its giving.

* * *

 

Their horses’ steel shoes clattered over cobbles of Vauxhall the morning of Beltane, a joyous charge up the hill in grand presentation of victory, the voices of the people crying greeting, the flood of flowers in their path so thick that the whole of the war party looked instead warriors of the Good Folk, bestrewn in the finery of magic and the world’s beauty. There would be a grand feast for the whole of the court, a celebration that would push the night’s festivities to fever pitch, but now, as they dismounted, it was an intimate moment—wives and lovers came running, children swung high, tears happy and tears mourning the fallen. Up on the walls, children flung still more flowers.

He turned, a presence appearing in his peripheral vision, expecting perhaps the clap of Trevelyan’s broad palm against his shoulder—he found hazel-gold eyes and a mop of dark hair instead, half-lost amongst the swirl of flower petals that rained down from the walls.

“Well done, Bond,” Q murmured, and Bond could only blink as a callused palm seared gently against his cheek when Q pressed it there. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He stumbled a moment later under the assault of Trevelyan and Edward Donne crashing enthusiastically into him to pound congratulations into his shoulders, across his back—Alec loosed a war whoop in his ear that rang like bells and the crack of sword hilts against shields. Q was gone when his eyes cleared; slipped back into the crowd or a waking dream—Bond didn’t catch another moment’s peace until the sun was sliding under the dark of the earth in the west and panic was twisting knots in his chest. Two twists and feigned deafness freed him finally from the crowds of the Court, and a loping jog let him make up for the lost time.

“Bond,” he turned—M. M holding his satchel, the switches of wood. “You’ll be late if you dawdle. Off you go.”

“Ma’am,” he rumbled, and pressed his thanks into a kiss to her cheek.

The temple in this city was farther than the one in his home; he pushed open the doors as the priestess hefted the torch to put light to the fire. She nodded to him, letting it fall, lapping hungrily at the kindling. There were gifts abundant throughout the space—offerings of gratitude, trophies, the weapons of those who would go to war no more but had served it faithfully.

“Feed that when it catches, my lord; you’re expected.” She disappeared into the depths of the temple that no one not initiated dared tread.

He did as he was told, tending the Beltane fire as the Flower Moon climbed into the sky. When it roared, dragged sweat to his brow, glinting off the bared swords hung on the walls, he gathered his things.

This was not the stone of his fathers, and the ones he knelt on had not been built by his kin, but they accepted his blood and weight readily, and words older than memory tripped easy off his tongue. He didn’t look when the weight of hands came down on his shoulders, the press of a chest against his back. Long pale hands with delicate calloused fingers helped him feed ash and birch, holly and oak, elder and heather into the fire. They cupped around his on the stone knife, tracing the invisible stains where blood and tears had splattered. Bond blinked when the fire gave a feral hiss, as water from an unseen vessel turned into steam, the cloud of it curling around his face.

A lock of hair, inky in the light of the fire and curling around his fingers, came out of the bag next. Something, the magic that had hold of him this past month, perhaps, made him bring the curls to his lips long enough to smell the lightning and citrus scent of them, before he let those long white hands fling it into the fire.

“Where is the steel you would give, Bond?”

He reached, drawing a sword as familiar an action as breathing, and yet it was heavy now.

“This is not the blade I was expecting,” the god murmured into his ear.

“That was a gift,” Bond told the fire as if in a trance, felt the body behind him breathe deep. “This is mine to give.”

“It will make the magic all the stronger,” the god mused, and pressed a palm down the long keen edge of it—blood bloomed like wildflowers. It was a lot of blood, enough that Bond fumbled to put pressure to it, the crumpled leather of the satchel not nearly absorbent enough for—

The fire roared higher still.

* * *

 

“Lord Bond, you must wake up now,” the priestess said, an insistent hand at his shoulder—he woke with a jerk that dislodged her, and very wisely she did not touch him again, backing away to let him get his bearings, flat on his back on the temple floor. There was a weight on his chest, a box he cradled close as he sat up.

The box was wood, smallish and deceptively simple; oiled, to show that the grain was beautiful, and the hinges were steel so finely worked that a master craftsman would struggle to replicate the work. There was no latch, no lock—a tiny sigil marked the front and that was all, but Bond was certain it would never be opened by someone unwelcomed.

Head still spinning too hard to try standing, he stroked the smooth top of the box and wondered if he dared look inside—it opened under the pressure, so he supposed he must.

The Lord Bond was a wealthy man—his lands prospered, his service was highly valued by his monarch, and his was a deft touch at acquiring riches when his missions drew him to lands far-away. But this little box and its contents were indisputably a godly gift: the whole of the Queen’s coffers, his own, and that of every one of the Knights’ coffers would have run dry twice over to purchase the knife that lay nestled in velvet inside, much less the heavy cloak brooch. The least of them, or at least, the smallest of the tokens within: a soft little pouch of seeds—heather, he thought, they were the seeds of the flower of his homeland, but didn’t dare touch them any further for fear of losing one or damaging a delicate casing—was of softer, thinner leather than his best gloves. The brooch was steel, again, but the decoration was as delicately wrought as the hinges of the box, a blood-colored chip of crystal at the head of the long pin, which was as straight and strong as the sword it had been born from.

The blade was the most magnificent of them: the short stone blade had been wrapped in a cradle of steel that left the full tang plain to see, bone and blood red gems filling the hilt to a comfortable grip. Not the sort of knife one might take to battle—it would defend as all blades did, but here was a blade that by its shape and keen edge alone would serve its master loyally for the thousand small tasks one reached for a knife to do daily.

There was no mistaking the intention in these gifts, and he found it gave him the strength he needed, to stand.

“Thank you,” he offered the quiet altar, the fire licking quite tamely at the branches, and bowed before he strode out.

* * *

 

An hour later, he was not nearly so calm—his Quartermaster had proven to be remarkably elusive, and with the Beltane fires roaring full throughout the land, every man, woman, and youth old enough to jump the coals was looking for someone to jump with them. Even M’s haughty look was warmed with drink, a wicked sparkle in her gimlet eye when she saw the box, and his belt bare of a sword. But Q was not among their people frolicking out of doors, and he wasn’t in the suite of rooms M had gifted him in the royal quarters either; Bond had guessed he might be changing clothes for the revelry—he was not.

Bond’s footsteps felt desperately loud in the quiet of the castle’s halls, but they followed a very familiar path. Q kept a tinker’s forge in the cellars closest to the smithy and the training field; he had held court there, during the long weeks of training. If he wasn’t there, well.

Well, Bond wasn’t entirely certain where he’d look next, but it would probably involve alerting M and the Knights Elite that some foul fate had accosted their Quartermaster and pushing down all the softer feelings that had bloomed in his chest. He pushed open the door instead of examine those softer feelings. “Q?”

A whirling crash met him—Q stumbled out of the wreckage that had once been an assembled suit of heavy plate, and stared at him with wild eyes, more gold than hazel. His arms were tucked, quite oddly, behind him—Q often affected them crossed over his chest, or oftener still remained forearm-deep in whatever project he labored over.

“Bond—but you—what are you doing here, Bond?”

“I hadn’t yet seen you at the Beltane fires, I thought I’d seek you out. But I should ask, Q; what are you doing down here?” He moved closer, and wondered if Q had always watched him like he was doom prowling closer. He thought that probably he hadn’t.

“It was—a bit warm for me, with the fires.”

“Well, it certainly isn’t too warm down here.” The box in one careful hand, the other free, he reached—Q, only a step or two away from ending up sprawled over the strewn armor, froze when it touched him at the shoulder.

“Has something changed, since last I saw you? Q?” he coasted his fingers down the length of Q’s arm, coaxing it from behind his back, but angling his own body open, so that the continued touch might not be so intimidating. “Do I overstep my welcome?”

“I—”

A wad of cloth, where there ought to be only smooth strong skin and quick, capable fingers. Blood, the warm wet of it, familiar to his fingers and to his nose. He didn’t look up until he’d turned Q’s palm up, the broad slice across it viciously deep, but healing fast.

“Bond.”

“Hmm. I cannot decide if I ought to be beaten for a fool for not realizing, or because I asked you for your own courting gift. Q,” and he had to soften his voice, because the look in his love’s eyes made him feel like a monster. “What does a god have to fear from a mortal man, Q? If—If my suit is unwelcome, you need only say. Only, you’ll have to take these—they’re too lovely to gather dust unused if you don’t want them.”

“Bond, what are you saying? I don’t understand, you—you asked me for courtship gifts.”

“I did; I begged you for the courage to show the one I loved the depth of my feelings, and a gift to show them sincere. Does it not come clear?”

“Yes, of course it’s clear,” Q snapped, “So why should you be here, instead of with—” He shook his head, and tugged on his hand, as well, trying to wrest himself away from where Bond was rewrapping the bandages properly.

“I did not realize, in asking a gift of the gods, that I was asking a gift of my beloved—had I realized, I might simply have thanked you then. But I’ve made a mess of it, haven’t I, darling?”

There were tears in Q’s eyes, an angry crease to his brow.

“These are meant for you, Q, as a token of my adoration,” Bond said simply as he finished wrapping the cut, and bowed his head to press a kiss to the hand it adorned. “I didn’t have the words, not when I first felt it, and it frightened me. I admit, it frightens me still.”

“Bond, I don’t—” Q shook his head again, and Bond could see the bewilderment on his face despite the distraction of his heartbeat, a slow painful thud against his ribs. He’d known some sort of despair before now but this was new, this ice-cold wash through his veins.

“I’ll understand if you didn’t feel the same—” he essayed, swallowing with difficulty. Hoping, in truth, to be contradicted.

“Shut up, Bond,” Q snapped, and his tears spilled over properly. He sniffed irritably. “Shut up, of course I do; why else would I—do you imagine I often find occasion to bleed?”

“No, my love,” Bond grinned, spirits instantly buoyed. “I hope it’s the last time, actually.”

“You asked me for courting gifts, Bond, what on earth? No one asks me that—what do I know of courting? How was I to—Could you not have asked for something properly in my repertoire?”

“Like a blade that might kill the man threatening all I love?” Bond murmured. Q had yet to drag his hand away, so he took the offered advantage while the man grumbled his complaints, following fine bones to the inner wrist, pressing his lips there as well. “Like the courage to confess to a brilliant young man who might not want an entanglement with an old war-dog like me? Or do you imagine that those gifts weren’t exactly what I would hope to offer: privacy, warmth, safety, and usefulness, to say nothing of the chance to grow strong and old together?”

Q frowned all the harder; Bond found it quite adorable. “I—I won’t—can’t.”

“Grow old?” Bond chuckled. “No, I imagine not. Does it matter, though, if you want me?”

“I do want you,” Q admitted, like it was something to be guilty for. “I near drove myself mad, trying to imagine who must have caught your loyalty so strongly that you had killed a man to ask for tokens for them.”

“Did you?” Bond rumbled, and tucked closer to put lips to Q’s throat—hummed in deep appreciation when Q tilted his chin the better to be worshipped.

“I thought I’d say goodbye to you, tonight. I had convinced myself it didn’t hurt—I was prepared to leave this land in a sixty-year peace—M would have had to say goodbye to her hopes of unifying the land, but you’d have had peace to wed your lover and raise up your children.”

“Oh, no,” Bond chided. He nipped, sinking a warning growl into the long tendon standing out so starkly from his throat. “That’s positively hateful, Q.”

Long fingers turned to talons at his shoulders, dragging him closer still.

“I know—I despise traveling when I needn’t, and I had planned to be here a long while—M’s got a bastard somewhere called Uther, and I have plans for his son. I would have, though.”

“What use is a Knight with no wars to fight?”

“It would ruin you,” Q agreed. “I was a fool, forgive me.”

“Keep me close, and keep me busy, and I’m sure I can see my way to that, darling.”

“As close to hand as the sword I’ll make you, my love,” Q promised, and sealed it with a vicious kiss that made Bond’s blood sing like the feral pound of siege drums. Q didn’t draw back until Bond was dizzy with want, for him and for sweet oxygen, and then it was with a smile like a fox’s, sharp and greedy. “But perhaps there’s another sword that might come close to hand now?”

“Can I always look forward to such terrible innuendo, love? Certainly, if it’s sword-handling you desire, I’m your man. I shall have to borrow yours, however—a clever god has made off with mine.”

“You offered it freely, if I recall it right. But no matter. I shall endeavor always to have a sword of mine in your hands, my Lord Bond.”

“With pleasure, Q—with pleasure.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! My notes are below; any questions are welcome.
> 
> The title comes from a quote in The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley: "I have neither talent or taste for kingship, cousin. I am a warrior, and to dwell always in one place and live at court would weary me to death!" Gawaine, if memory serves. 
> 
> Vauxhall (London) and Benhall (Cheltenham) are, respectively, the seats of MI6 and MI5--MI5's building, amusingly, is colloquially known as 'The Doughnut', at least according to Wikipedia, and Benhall is about 113 miles from London.
> 
> A perhaps-not-so-brief note on magic: I've mentioned several popular elements magic-craft, and while there was some thought to my use of it, modern magic-craft is built on a millenia of cultural mixing, outright lies, and showmanship as well as various annecdotal accounts of genuine power--whatever your thoughts on magic, the spell(s) within is entirely fictional. The elements utilized may or may not correspond with anyone else's thoughts on magic--they don't entirely correlate to my own.  
> Your magical milage may vary, and I encourage further research. I have broken the spell down at the end of the notes, for those who are interested in the thought process and symbolism.
> 
> The moons and their names, were taken from this article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/full-moon/  
> (Many of the articles I studied quoted a ubiquitous 'Native American' naming convention; if I've inadvertently failed in delivering authentic European titles, please feel free to direct me to a more appropriate source--I've no interest in butchering American tribal culture or perpetuating that butchering. Likewise; more in-depth information on authentic Celtic culture that doesn't originate in the Renaissance romanticism and 17th/18th century mysticism movements would be vastly appreciated.)  
> Wolf Moon: January  
> Egg Moon: April  
> Milk Moon: May -- also known as the Flower Moon, hence the abundence of flowers for their return. Beltane is a Gaelic-originating festival, typically held the 1st of May, and well-bastardized by the Church and neo-paganism of various sorts. 
> 
> "Bring me ash and birch, holly and oak. Bring me elder and heather, and good sharp steel. Throw a’light the Milk Moon fires—weep for them, and bleed; you will bring the mountains to the fen. And beside the winding river, atop ragstone strong and old, you shall find all you need."  
> Ash is a traditionally magical wood in the British Isles and surrounding mythologies, and serves as a reference to the World Tree; connection between past and future, as well as a susperstituous snake-repellent. Birch is another significant wood in Celtic magic, it refers to perpetual youth and renewal. Holly and Oak are in references to the neopaganist legend of the Holly and Oak Kings and their cyclical battle throughout the year; whether or not there is any Pre-Christian historical signifigance, I am unsure but doubtful; it has a particularly 17th century mystic feel. Elder, bark, flowers, and berries, was a common remedy in medieval Europe, and became known as a healing and protective wood. Heather has a great deal of significance in Scotland and the Celtic nations; in addition to symbolizing admiration and protection, it's an especially useful plant, and smells fantastic.  
> The cold iron Rudyard Kipling's poem describes iron as an anti-magic material, and that's been supported by a great deal of the superstitious practice of Europe; the Fair Folk are reportedly repelled by it, and it's generally held to be bad news for magic. Metals (iron, silver, etc) recieve a lot of attention in writings about magic. Steel developed by man was discovered in about 13th century BC; it was difficult to manufacture in Europe: iron becomes steel at high temperatures and long periods of working the charcoal's carbon into the metal; Europe's metallury developed in the 11th century, around 200 years after Damascus steel developed in the Middle East.  
> Basalt is a common igneous rock to find in volcanic calderas. The mountains where Glen Coe (of the massacre and one of the Skyfall filming locations), is an ancient caldera; basalt is thought to help gain courage and strength during meditation.  
> The river refers to the Thames; ragstone to the Kentish Ragstone (a sandy limestone that developed in the Lower Cretaceous) the Romans imported to build many of their structures in London. Many other imported limestones can be found in the lower layers of London, showing the development of London's masonry under Roman, Norman, and later rule.
> 
> Not fully shown was what Q contributed: hair (his own), blood (his own), bone (that of a legendary white stag), 'to the fen' is brackish lake-water (the fens surrounding the Isle of Avalon), a great deal of the raw power needed for transmutation, and the fire of his forge.
> 
> Thanks!


End file.
